27 July 2024, The Indian EXPRESS
Banks to give home loans even to non-salaried on digital payment history
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GS3-Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development
- AFTER A NEW credit assessment model for MSMEs announced in the Budget, the Finance Ministry is now developing a similar product to provide home loans based on the digital footprints of an individual, said Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi.
- The move would be beneficial for individuals applying for home loans whose creditworthiness is not easy to determine.
CERT-In in touch with Apple over cyber attacks, minister tells House
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GS3-Basics of Cyber Security
- The government had asked Apple for details of the alleged state-sponsored cyberattacks on Indians last year and would act on the same, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
- Subsequently, in a supplementary question during the Question Hour, Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha asked the minister if the government had taken cognisance of such attacks.
- In October 2023, Chadha, other Opposition leaders and journalists had received notifications from Apple about potential state-sponsored spyware attacks on their phones.
India, US sign cultural property pact on return of smuggled antiquities
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GS1-Indian Culture - Salient aspects of Art Forms, Literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times
- India and the US signed a bilateral cultural property agreement Friday to facilitate the return of stolen and smuggled antiquities, many of which find their way to the US.
- This agreement has a defined framework for the return of such artefacts to India and will facilitate smooth and early repatriation, officials said, and will also help prevent future trafficking.
Green rings
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GS3-Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation
- Even before the cauldron was lit on the evening of July 26, and despite the shadow cast by the attempt to sabotage the country’s rail network, the 33rd Olympic Games had a clear winner — Paris 2024, which is creating history by hosting the greenest Games ever.
- The Games are being held as the planet reaches a tipping point.
- This week, temperatures soared to the highest in recorded history, 17.15 C on Monday, which broke the record set just a day before, 17.09 C on Sunday.
- With Paris, the Olympics is acknowledging and addressing the climate-change crisis.
- The world’s greatest sporting event aims to shine a light on the urgent need for change.
A lack of ambition
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GS3-Issues related to Direct and Indirect Farm Subsidies and Minimum Support Prices
- The Union Budget has received kudos for staying the course on fiscal consolidation, but has also been panned for being short on big ideas.
- A case in point is the farm sector. Despite Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman listing “productivity and resilience in agriculture” as the first of her nine priorities, there’s little in the proposals that captures the imagination.
- The plan to “initiate” one crore farmers into natural farming “in the next two years” is a virtual repetition of the budget promises of 2023-24 (to “facilitate” one crore farmers to adopt the same “over the next three years”) and 2022-23 (to “promote” chemical-free farming in 5-km wide corridors along the river Ganga).
- Building a digital public infrastructure for agriculture to upload the details of farmers and their lands found mention in last year’s budget too.
- Developing large-scale clusters and supply chains for vegetables was discussed in the 2018-19 budget with reference to an Operation Greens scheme specific to tomato, onion and potato.
State of denial
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GS2-India and its Neighborhood- Relations
- The word “dalal” is a useful word in Bangla. I’ve not come across an exact equivalent in English.
- They combine the qualities and some of the functionalities of a lobbyist and a shameless sycophant all rolled into one.
- You get them in all shapes and forms and in all fields, from politics to bureaucracy, amid intellectuals and in the media.
- If you need to get something done in a corrupt government office, the first person you contact is a dalal.
- And so, unseemly though the mechanism is and despite the hierarchy among dalals, the system works.
Beijing, the mediator
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GS2-India and its Neighborhood- Relations
- In March 2023, China stunned the world by brokering an agreement between arch-enemies, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
- At a meeting hosted in Beijing by Wang Yi, the Foreign Minister of China, representatives of both countries — Ali Shamkhani, then Secretary of the Supreme National Council of Iran, and Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aliban, Minister of State and National Security Advisor of Saudi Arabia — issued a joint statement agreeing to re-establish diplomatic ties.
- The meeting was widely seen as a great success of the Chinese foreign policy to limit American influence in the Middle East.
Govt to form inter-ministerial core group on employment, integration of jobs data
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GS2-Ministries and Departments of the Government
- A core group of officials drawn from multiple government departments and ministries will work towards integrating efforts to deal with the imperative of employment generation.
- This would be done by way of streamlining efforts and integration data sets, which are “currently existing in silos”, a statement from the Ministry of Labour and Employment said on Friday.
- The inter-ministerial meeting comes close on the heels of the announcement made in Budget 2024-25 about three employment-linked incentive (ELI) schemes for two years and an internship programme in partnership with India Inc for five years.
Private banks not lending enough to corporates a concern: DFS Secretary
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GS3-Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development
- Private banks are not lending enough to the corporate sector and much of the loan disbursements are being undertaken by a handful of the Public Sector Banks (PSBs), Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary Vivek Joshi said in an interview with Ravi Dutta Mishra, Aanchal Magazine & Hitesh Vyas in New Delhi.
- Joshi said that the gap between deposit and credit growth is widening but the Current Account Saving Account (CASA) ratio for scheduled commercial banks is still at a healthy 41 per cent. However, the ratio should not fall below 40 per cent and so banks must improve efficiency.
Puberty blockers
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GS3-Science and Technology- Developments and their Applications and Effects in Everyday Life
- Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has alleged that his transgender child was (figuratively) “killed by the woke mind virus” after he was “tricked” into consenting to the use of “puberty blockers”.
- The child, whom Musk named Xavier, was born in 2004. In 2022, she legally changed her gender identity to female and her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, and legally distanced herself from her father.
- Vivian has told NBC News that Musk was lying, and that he was a “cold, uncaring, and narcissistic” father.
Names of dhaba owners on Kanwar route: issues before SC
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GS2-Indian Constitution—Historical Underpinnings, Evolution, Features, Amendments, Significant Provisions and Basic Structure
